silverlight

NBC and the NFL announced Thursday that, for the second straight season, NBC will stream the 17-game Sunday Night Football schedule live on NBCSports.com and NFL.com. The coverage, which is the result of a new one-year deal between the broadcaster and the sports organization that will see them sharing the revenues from advertising that NBC sells around the coverage, will be comprised of NBC Sports' "Sunday Night Football" broadcast, enhanced with four additional camera angles and several other new interactive features, NBC says.

Multiplatform encoding solutions specialist, Envivio (note: the company recently launched iLiveTV, a mobile video encoding and distribution solution for evaluating, developing and deploying live and on-demand video services for the Apple iPhone--see the article published on itvt.com, June 9th), announced Friday the immediate availability of what it claims is the first complete encoding and DRM protected distribution solution optimized for Microsoft's newly launched Silverlight 3 platform.

ExtendMedia announced Tuesday the general availability of version 3.5 of its flagship "multi-screen video monetization" platform, OpenCASE, which it says was purpose-built to meet the needs of content creators and distributors seeking to build, deploy and manage unified video services across TV's, PC's and mobile devices. According to the company, OpenCASE 3.5 is designed to be platform-neutral; features out-of-the-box integration with leading ad servers, CDN's, DRM providers and encoding platforms; supports both paid and ad-supported business models; and can deliver streamed or downloadable content to multiple devices. The company says that enhancements offered by the new platform include:

Webcasting specialist, iStreamPlanet, said Monday that it has been tapped by Microsoft to help deliver live streaming and on-demand coverage of the Wimbledon Championships for NBC Sports' Wimbledon Live service on NBCSports.com. According to the company, it will manage the encoding of live coverage of the tennis championship, as well as design and deploy a custom Microsoft Silverlight-based "media experience" that will leverage Microsoft Internet Information Services 7.0 (IIS) Smooth Streaming adaptive bit rate technology (adapts the video stream in accordance with the limitations of the end-user's broadband connection).

Microsoft's MSN service has teamed with Endemol UK and Pure Grass Films on an interactive sci-fi series, called "Kirill." The series consists of 10 three-minute episodes, hosted on MSN Video (it can be viewed in HD quality by downloading Microsoft Silverlight) and supplemented by various blogs, images, "secret" Web sites, and additional audio and video files scattered throughout the Internet. It tells the story of a man who is trying to make contact with a young woman who holds the key to the future of humanity, and it places various Microsoft products and services--including Vista, Live Search, Live Messenger, Live Spaces and MSN--at the crux of the story.

--Service Employs Microsoft Silverlight
--BBC iPlayer Now Accessible through Sky Player

UK satellite TV provider, BSkyB has launched a subscription-based broadband video service, called Sky Player TV, which features both linear channels and VOD and which--unlike its existing Sky Player service--is offered as a standalone product, rather than as a complementary service for subscribers of its flagship pay-TV service (note: the company will continue to provide subscribers to its flagship pay-TV service with access to Sky Player's line-up of on-demand content, in line with their core subscription; subscribers to its Sky Multiroom and Sky Broadband Max offerings also have access to linear channels).

--Teams with Abertis on Solution for Delivering DTT on the Internet
--Announces New Silverlight Deals in Europe
--Previews Silverlight H.264 and AAC Support

At the IBC show in Amsterdam earlier this month, Microsoft launched its Protected Broadcast Driver Architecture (PBDA), a platform for enabling broadcast TV on the PC. According to the company, the platform's functionality is made possible by its new Windows Media Center TV Pack, and enables the PC-TV hardware ecosystem to integrate virtually any free or premium TV service worldwide into Windows Media Center, while providing strong protection for pay-TV content.

--Player Version 2.7 Integrates Microsoft Silverlight, Atlas Ad Server

--Appoints New President and COO

--New Deals with tvtv, CAN Communicate and FIFA, Fox Intl's BabyTV

Broadband TV infrastructure company, Narrowstep (note: the
company's telvOS technology has been used to power a number of
high-profile broadband TV services, including the ITV Local service of
UK commercial terrestrial broadcaster, the Independent Television
Network; it recently announced that it was shifting the focus of its sales
and marketing efforts away from smaller niche content
providers--which it says "traditionally had lower margins and less